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the sewing room to collect what Miss G calls her ‘basket of necessaries’, then we was off again, up the stairs to the door which leads into the palace proper, and along those deep carpeted corridors and up more stairs, great wide ones with shiny brass handrails and massive paintings all over the walls, and then along another corridor with so many doors I lost count of them. No one else seemed to be around, no footmen or other servants, nor any other members of the family.
    All the while Mr Finch was talking to me. ‘Urgent alterations are required, Miss Romano, to an item of clothing for his investiture,’ he said, and I tried to recall where I’d heard the word before, to give me a clue about where we was headed. Mr Finch was rabbiting on. ‘The costume has been made for him by the royal costumiers but His Royal Highness is not happy with it. I have made a number of adjustments but I have been unable to please him. Specifically, the breeches are too wide and he would like them taken in. The fabric is so fine that it puckers with every stitch, so I hope that your small hands will be more successful than my own efforts. Are you listening, Miss Romano?’
    As it slowly dawned on me who we was heading for, I felt sure I would faint clear away before I got there.
    ‘Yes sir,’ I puffed, ‘I will do my best to please the prince.’
    ‘Not “the prince”,’ he snapped in a fearsome whisper. ‘“His Royal Highness” it should be, at all times, and you are not to address him directly, ever.’
    ‘Understood, Mr Finch,’ I said, praying I would remember all the instructions flying my way.
    ‘We are going to his private chambers, and afterwards you are not to breathe a word to anyone about where we have been, is that understood?’
    ‘Yes sir,’ I managed to gasp again, just as we arrived. Mr Finch smoothed down his hair and pulled his jacket straight, and I checked that my dress and apron were in order, and my hair still neatly tied back. Then he opened the door.
    The tape comes to an end.
    Patsy Morton research diary, 2nd June 1970
    Meeting with Dr Watts at lunchtime today, as Prof insists, to get the benefit of his ‘guidance’ about my potential ex-patient interviewees. In other words, he wants to make sure I’m only talking to people who will tell it as he wants it told.
    To be honest I didn’t take to the man at all. He talked down to me as if I was a child, calling me ‘dear’. I’m
not
his ‘dear’. We’ve only just met. Perhaps that’s how he treats all women, but by the end I felt like slapping him.
    He didn’t seem to have any objections to the other three patients on the list but when it came to Maria Romano he’s definitely warning me off. He started with the usual caution about patient confidentiality and then proceeded to break all his own rules, telling me that she’d been a patient for many years suffering from what he called persistent paranoid delusional mania, and even reading direct from her file, like he really had a point to prove. Of course I didn’t tell him I’ve already started interviewing her!
    His secretary came and whispered something in his ear and he asked me to excuse him for a few minutes. He was gone for much longer so I started wandering around his office, looking through the windows, etc., till I noticed he’d left M’s file open on the desk.
    I had a quick flick through but it was all a bit technical and there was not enough time to make proper notes. Then remembered I’d brought my camera so took photos of a couple of pages then got jumpy. Dr W came back after about quarter of an hour, all bright and breezy, we chatted a bit more and I said goodbye.
    New problem: how to get my photographs of the medical notes developed without revealing personal information? Can’t take them to Boots the Chemist, can I?

Chapter Four
    London, 2008
    That very week, despite my impeccable answers to those consultants’ crass questions, I was made redundant.